Page 86 of Second Story

My brother tries to shield me by shoving me behind him. I have to shove back to stay piggy in the middle. Josh can take that roughness from me. This kid can’t, so I’m gentler with him. “Easy, Kwasi. Easy.” I tilt my head to the end of the street where a couple of cops stand beside the same kind of high-speed pursuit car that Dad used to tune up for a living. “No need to attract their attention, yeah?”

“Too late.” Kwasi spits the same definition for my brother as Noah once did for me. “He’s a fed.”

Josh huffs from behind me. “I already told you?—”

My client rolls his shoulders. “You already told me shit.” His fists still clench. “I saw you get out of that.” He unclenches for just long enough to jab a shaking finger at the pursuit car. “And I heard you chatting work shit with the driver. You calling me a liar?”

I expect Josh to react. For once, he must read this high emotion. Or maybe he realises he’s a sole white sheep between two black ones, and I can’t remember the last time he backed off from a fight, but he lets me deal with this one.

All of Kwasi’s posturing is fear—him assuming his bad dreams have come to life like I bet Isaac did the moment he opened his eyes this morning. Kwasi’s finger still shakes when he jabs it at me. “Thought he was you, didn’t I? Went over to check they weren’t hassling you for some bullshit reason. Only he told me to mind my business and turned his back, so I thought—” He breaks off to look anywhere but at me, and I guess the reason.

“You thought I was done advocating for you? That I wasn’t actually on your side and hadn’t been this whole time?”

His nod is tight. Fast. There and gone as quickly as it once took him to throw his drink at me. That high-stress meeting led to a trusting breakthrough for us. Now we’re almost back where we started, and a night without sleep means I don’t think on my feet as fast as usual.

Josh does it for me.

“Hey, listen. I’m sorry.” He muscles his way between us. “You surprised me, that’s all.” He surveys a kid no older than I was the last time I got locked up, and Josh is as blunt as usual. “Was expecting my twin to give me a bollocking this morning, not one of his clients.” He dices with danger by extending a fist, and Kwasi flicks a gaze my way to ask a simple, if silent, question.

Can I trust him?

I’ve never hesitated before.

I don’t exactly hesitate now, but Josh frowns at a split-second delay my client doesn’t notice—Kwasi bumps my brother’s fist, this drama over for him. It isn’t for Josh, who opens his mouth, no doubt to askwhat the fuck. I stop him with a black-and-white statement.

“I said to meet me at eleven.”

He surprises me with his answer.

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have scared me shitless with that phone call, should you?” He hip-checks me out of the way to sling an arm across Kwasi’s shoulder. “Sounds like we both got a scare this morning, yeah? Guess that makes us even.”

He steers him up the steps to the court entrance, and I jog after them, on the back foot all over again when I hear what else Josh confesses.

“I was on edge because Joe telling me to come here was a reminder of all the times he got nicked for TWOCing. Dad would always get down the station in a hurry. Would drop everything and pull no end of strings to get Joe out of trouble. Did favour after favour to get him released with a telling-off instead of a criminal record, until he couldn’t. If Joe called, Dad ran.” His gaze lands on hands I’d usually shove in my pockets. “Can’t help doing the same.”

I’d say something about not needing his help if hearing what Dad used to do for me didn’t knock the breath from my body.

Josh isn’t done with landing punches. “My missus says Joe doesn’t need me to watch out for him these days, but I almost lost him once.” He shoots his own cuffs to show Kwasi how I looked before acid ended our identical days. “Not about to risk that happening ever again. So, if he calls?—”

“You come running?”

My brother nods. “Except he never does. Call, I mean. Mr. Self-Sufficient here never asks for a fucking thing, so for him to actually tell me to be here? You better believe I pulled in a favour of my own to get here in a hurry.” For once, he’s sheepish. “Might have overreacted by blue-lighting it across the river.” Josh checks his watch. “Bit early for court, isn’t it?”

Kwasi usually gets defensive when questioned. My brother’s won him over, and I wouldn’t have guessed Josh would end up tagging along on this very last chance to tour an empty courtroom. Some things haven’t changed. Josh is still assumptive. Still jumping to what sound like criminal conclusions. “What have you been charged with?”

“Nothing. It won’t be me on trial.” Kwasi’s chin lifting is a reminder of the one and only person I wish could see my brother being human by apologising, then by listening to Kwasi’s story. “Still feels like I’m being made to pay for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And it’s messed up that none of my family were there but they’re the ones who keep getting threatened on the daily.” He ends with two familiar words that must feel like a life sentence. “Wintergreen, innit?”

That’s a link Josh latches onto, firing question after question once our tour is over, but all I register is how often he checks his watch.

As soon as a reassured Kwasi heads off, I ask, “You need to get back to work?”

“No.”

I guess again. “You need to head off to buy supplies for tomorrow?”

Josh blinks. “What’s happening tomorrow?”

“You and Dad painting the nursery.”

---